News & Events

Timesheet System Adoption - The Elements of Success

SHARE

Accurate timekeeping is essential for any services organization; to ensure compliance with customer requirements, to track productive (and non-productive) work, and to maximize revenue and avoid “lost hours”. But timekeeping is not always viewed with enthusiasm by employees. What are ways to ensure individual employees embrace and adopt the system you are deploying?

Sue Evans, President of Evans, Inc. presented on the topic of Human-Centered Change at the Annual Unanet Champions Conference in March 2014, stating the key to getting people to embrace change starts with a coalition of sponsors, willing to dedicate time, communicate the business imperatives and have the authority to implement the change. An environment of trust must be established by the coalition to “help people understand the need for change and to motivate them to take action which results in sustained changes in behavior.”

So how do you ensure that they are entering time, for not only the billable projects, but also the time spent on evenings or weekends writing proposals, doing business development or other things to grow your business?

First, you must make it easy – invest in a tool that can meet your government contracting requirements for DCAA compliance or professional services organization’s tracking of that biggest cost driver and source of revenue – employee and subcontractor labor. The tool must make time entry quick, easy to use and error-free, enabling the employee to charge time to the right project for the right number of hours. This must feel painless so the employee will enter time every day for all activities.

Second, train each employee with an initial session on their first day of work with on-line video demonstrations, group training, or easy-to-follow, detailed training documentation. Provide specific examples of what work activities are direct as opposed to projects that are indirect. Explain the common examples of how time is charged and tracked with regards to your business policies for vacation, holiday, project management, proposal writing, hiring, etc.

Third, lead your employees by example. Encourage and reward time entry recorded for each day in a relevant way for your organization. Have your employees sign an employee agreement designating this requirement and review at the periodic evaluations.

Fourth, highlight elements in the new system that the individual may see as beneficial; for example, real-time self-service information on vacation leave balance, current assignments and schedule calendar, and collaboration with Project Notes.

Once your entire organization is tracking all of their time for their work activities in Unanet, powerful insight can be gained by measuring this invaluable real-time data to analyze the health of your company and your financial position. Smarter, quicker, early decisions are enabled by evaluating

billable time vs non-billable time

if past and current contracts are profitable

if you have enough of the right resources now, and for that next proposal

To learn more about how to make time entry easy for your end-users, register for the webinar Time Out for Time Management in Unanet for your Administrators, Project Managers and every End User – empower everyone with quick Tips and Tricks for tracking time in your Unanet today.

"Our experience with Unanet has been such a vast improvement over our old combination of Deltek T&E and Spreadsheets. "- Brandon Labonte President & CEO, Ardentmc

"I love Unanet! It is great that you can run a report and easily see who is available, what projects a person is assigned to, and how many hours people are charging."- Michelle Graffin Controller, Orbital Technologies

"I’ve never done a timesheet so fast in my life! What an incredible change. I’m so glad we switched. They’ve really done a lot to polish it up, too."- Paco Hope Managing Consultant Cigital, Inc.

"Unanet allows us to accurately monitor project “burn rate” in a timely manner; which is driven down to team leads and tied to performance rewards."President, Medium-Sized Government Contractor

"We initially used to use Unanet for our timesheets. Now we use it to rework our business. It's amazing. It saves us millions. It improves process and has changed the way we manage our business."Finance Manager, CB Richard Ellis